Week One Complete

It's been a good week of training. This is week one, done. To continue where I left off... Wednesday was a cross-training day but since we were snowed in I was stuck with doing an exercise video. That's fine, but I was looking forward to getting on a bike at the gym. Oh well. I did Tae Bo, with Billy Blanks. It was 27 minutes of kickboxing-type exercise. My sister and I used to do this one back in college, so I watched the latest Biggest Loser episode while I exercised. I have the whole thing memorized so Billy was just in the background motivating me.

Thursday was another three mile run. This time I did two miles around the indoor track at the Y then another mile on the treadmill. I get bored pretty easily so the first two miles were rough. I wish I could have turned around half-way through too but that's not how it works there. I felt pretty good though. I just wish I could learn how to slow myself down to finish what I need to.

Friday was a rest day. Gotta love those! :) Nothing exciting there.

Saturday was a 30 minute cross-training day. We got another 6 inches of snow dumped on us, so going anywhere was out of the question. I decided to pull out Billy Blanks again, but this time his Boot Camp work out. 55 minutes of kicking my butt, TaeBo style. Wow. I hadn't done this one more than a few times so I forgot what it entailed. Lots of ab workout and punching and kicking. Yeah... I'm feeling it today. Wow! My abs are killing me!

Today was the first "long" run of my training. It called for four miles. I've done that once before but that's the longest I've ever gone. It was 32 degrees out, with a slight snowfall. Beautiful day to go running. There was a little wind so my fingers were cold for the first mile but warmed up after that. After being informed that the half-marathon will be going over highways and overpasses, I decided I'd better train myself going over bridges and things. Luckily, we have an overpass on our road, so I went out two miles and back two. The overpass is just shy of one mile from our house, so I went over it twice. Once at the beginning and once at the end. It actually wasn't too bad. I didn't have to psych myself up to do it.

My pace today was pretty decent. I stayed right around 11:15/mi in all of my 1/2 mile splits. I'm pretty happy with that pace. There were times I was going around 10:00/mi but had to slow myself down in order to make sure I could finish the run. I did it, and am looking forward to future longer distances.